We have been trialling the use of RSS in Studyspace. The current version of Blackboard has a tool for placing RSS feeds on the main 'My Home' page. As a result we have made a number of optional modules available that staff and students can use to customise this page including feeds from a number of news and broadcast channels, including this 'Ed Tech Updates' blog. If you want to try them out navigate to the Blackboard/Studyspace 'My Home' page and then click on the 'modify Content' button towards the top right of the screen. Select the feeds that you would like to use (e.g. BBC, Guardian, Times, Telegraph, FT, THES) and click Submit at the bottom of the page.
Perhaps more useful would be for staff and students to be able to select and publish their own feeds. There are of course many tools on the web that enable you to do this such as aggregator tools e.g. http://www.Pageflakes.com. One Community allows the publication of RSS feeds and has a basic aggregator tool (see the Resources tab). Also although Studyspace/Blackboard does not have direct support for RSS feeds within modules it is still possible to do including feeding One Community blogs into Studyspace. This can be done through the free web tool Feed2JS ( http://feed2js.org/ ). The process is very straightforward but see the end of this post for details.
Yahoo Pipes (http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/)is another very useful web based toolkit that allows RSS feeds to be merged and filtered and then fed into One Community or Studyspace. The site has library of customised pipes that have shared by other users.
Geocoded RSS feeds provide another dimension but perhaps another day...
Using Feed2js with Blackboard
Visit the Feed2js website and click on the Build tab. Enter the RSS feed address and click on the preview button to check the feed is working correctly. There are also a number of other options that can be adjusted and these change the way the feed is displayed. I would recommend leaving these alone until you have tried it out. Click on Generate Javascript. The 'Javascript' will then be displayed in a text box. Copy all of the text, and then from within the Blackboard Control Panel enter a content area and click on Add Item. Give the item a name and then in the textbox button menu click on the button. Paste in the text and then click on the submit button. This should result in the RSS feed being displayed. Warning: Do not try editing the feed in Blackboard once it has been created or you may need to start again.
Keywords: RSS
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